Lauren Fishbein ’95

As a Telecommunications Section attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division since 1997, Lauren Fishbein ’95 has investigated mergers in the cable, satellite, wireless, long distance, and Internet backbone markets. In 2004, she received the Attorney General’s John Marshall Award for Outstanding Achievement as a member of the team that evaluated applications for long distance authority. "None of this would have been possible without Yale’s Career Options Assistance Program (COAP), which not only allowed me to enter government service, but to make it my career," she says.

COAP, which provides graduates with loan repayment assistance according to income level and regardless of career choice, supported Fishbein as a law clerk for a federal trial judge and then a state supreme court justice, and subsequently as a DOJ Honors Attorney. COAP is unique in that it allows graduates who pursue government, nonprofit, and low-paying private sector jobs not merely to survive, but to live financially reasonable lives, e.g., buy a home, pay for child care, and save for retirement.

Moreover, Fishbein notes, the "program criteria embrace those who choose to serve the public interest in legal specialties — antitrust, securities, and intellectual property law — where the gap between public and private compensation literally runs into the millions of dollars." Fishbein, who also holds a masters in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School, is particularly grateful to be working in government and, in return, she contributes generously to the COAP fund each year.